On 16 Jul 2003 01:21:03 -0400, (DoN. Nichols)
wrote:

In article ,
Charles A. Sherwood wrote:

Last week I took delivery of a Rockwell 11x24 lathe.
This lathe is in exceptional condition and seems
like a vast improvement over my craftsman/atlas 12x36.
BTW, the craftsman is now FS.

Congratulations!

This machine saw very little use in its previous life
and has set for an extended period of time. (well preserved).

Great!

This machine has greased spindle bearings and I am wondering
if I should give them a healthy shot of grease. The manuals
says to grease every 200 hrs. Where does the old grease go?
Is it just forced out like when I grease my car or truck?
What kind of grease should I use??
I suspect its more that generic wheel bearing grease.

Are you *sure* that it wants grease? Does it say so on a plate
on the machine (in which case it should say what kind of grease --
probably no longer in production, but it will give you something to find
a cross-reference for.

Don, I've got one too, and it specifically calls for Texaco Regal
Starfak #2 grease on the lubrication plate. The gear train, by the
way, calls for Texaco Marfak #0 grease. An equivalent would be open
gear grease, which is designed to stand the high pressure and stay in
place.

snip

Also what grease should I use on the back gears?

On the teeth? Or on the bearings? The latter should again
probably be an oil -- as specified in the manual.

Yes, the bearings have oil cups. All cups and oilers call for Texaco
Regal BR&O oil. All of these names are I believe obsolete, but have
modern equivalents.

Somewhere I read that the carriage has gears in an oil bath.
I don't understand how to make sure its full. There is a
tiny oiler on the bottom of the apron but its too low to
be a fill plug. There are a couple spring loaded balls on
top the apron. When I squirt oil in them, it seems to run
out the bottom pretty fast.
Those oil the ways. The bottom oiler is the right place. It's the
devil trying to check the level. I replaced the oiler with an 1/8"
npt radiator drain valve, since my oiler leaked. The gear train will
take oil from the bath and dump it overboard eventually, so I always
give it 6-10 shots when I use the lathe, or until it overflows. It's
pretty easy to drop the apron and remove the oil reservoir. You'll
eventually need to anyway, since the one item that wears significantly
(I was told by Dick Triemstra, who sold it to me) is the main worm
gear on the clutch. You can clean out the reservoir if you do that.


My Clausing has the oil bath in the apron. There is a sight
gauge (a small window) in the side towards the tailstock (presumably to
keep it out of the path of hot chips and possibly falling workpieces).
There is a large Allen-head setscrew plugging a drain hole in the bottom
of the apron, and another in the side above the sight gauge to serve as
a fill point. I've not checked, but I suspect that these are in reality
pipe plugs with a hex socket in them.

I stole a VFD off a different machine to try it out.
My first observation is that the mechanical variable
speed drive has lots of friction. I needed to adjust the
torque curve in the VFD to make it start reliably at
high speed. It also coasts to a stop pretty quick.

Mechanical variable speed systems do tend to be inefficient.
But stopping quickly may save you from damage some day, so don't
complain about that. How did you stop it? Asked the VFD to stop it?
(In which case it was being powered to as stop, so it would stop even
more quickly). If you switched the power between the motor and the VFD,
you risked damage to the VFD's output transistors.

Requardless it runs pretty smooth and the mechanical
VS works well. Probably not much need to change the VFD
frequency.

Proably not -- at least until the variable mechanism wears out.
(That seems to be a weak point on Clausing machines so fitted -- mine
has step pulleys.)

I put a phase II AXA clone toolpost on it. It seems like
the right size and I think a BXA would be too big.

Hmm ... I put a BXA on my 12x24" Clausing (not much bigger than
an 11"), and feel that I would have been unhappy with the AXA.

A minor
issue is that the toolpost is bigger that the flat part of
the compound so I will need to make a spacer to lift the
toolpost up 1/4 inch.

Why? The AXA and BXA toolposts (along with their larger
brothers) have individual height stops on the tool holders. If they
won't get the tools high enough, that suggests that you really *did*
need the BXA size, which starts with a thicker chunk of metal below the
tool slot in the holders.

The problem is that the toolpost hits the compound top if you want to
square up the toolpost for threading with the compound set over. I
have the same setup. Sent the BXA back, got an AXA, then made a
spacer so it'd just clear the compound.

The real test is whether a tool holder sitting on the compound
(with or without the toolpost in place) will have the top edge of the
maximum size tool (insert tooling rises higher than the top of the shank
for the clamping parts, but the top of the inserts is in line with the
top of the shank) just slightly below the centerline. If it is above,
the toolpost is too large. You wind up using a lot of that adjustment
range for the smallest tools in the holder. (E.g. a 1/4" HSS tool in a
BXA which accepts a 5/8" shank as the maximum.)

I think there will still be plenty
of adjustment to get the toolbits on center.

I hope so.

Any thing else I should know about?

I have no frame of reference (my first lathe), but I like it. Check
the idler shaft on the variable speed drive. Mine had walked out of
the support on one end.

Good luck.

Pete Keillor

Since I don't know the Rockwell (though I do have one of their
7" shapers) I don't know for sure -- but you have my thoughts above.

Good Luck,
DoN.